Work Harder
by Hoorg
Summary: It's time to hit the gym! Tokoyami Fumikage always knew he wouldn't be able to rely on his quirk for combat all the time, his lack of control in the training camp gave him just enough motivation to actually start exercising. He had some doubts about working out alone, but he soon found himself a great trainer.


This one-shot was inspired by an ask I got on my Tumblr! If you want to see more of these, just shoot some scenarios at me there! Link to it is in my profile.

* * *

"I didn't think you'd need a headband."

Tokoyami suddenly froze, although All-Might's pre-recorded voice continued to echo through the now not-so-empty room. He quickly got the TV remote from the ground and paused the video, turning to answer to the cause of the interruption.

"You don't know a lot of things about me," Tokoyami had to crane his neck up to look at his fellow classmate's face, "Shoji."

Shoji raised a pair of hands in the air and let out a small chuckle. "Woah, sorry, I didn't know that was a personal thing for you. I just don't know how your feathers work very well."

Tokoyami didn't say anything. Upon close inspection, Shoji could see that the other was panting ever so slightly, beads of sweat dripping off the human part of his body. He was wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top that exposed his rather thin body – as well as the aforementioned red, blue and white headband. Shoji felt like commenting about the fact that most of Tokoyami's outfit was black, but he didn't want to further increase the tension in the room.

"Should I leave? I feel like I've caus–" Shoji was interrupted mid-sentence by a rather desperate looking Tokoyami.

"No. I need your help." Shoji was almost taken aback by how straightforward he had been, but Tokoyami did look like he was too tired to keep up his usual mysterious demeanor.

"Oh? Is that so? And how can I help?"

"Walk me through your usual exercise routine." Tokoyami crossed his arms. "I haven't been in a gym before – and I haven't exercised outside of school activities as of late – so I am unsure on how to train properly. That is also why I was following the All-Might instructional video, for your information."

"Alright then." Shoji nodded. "Is there any particular reason in your sudden interest in fitness?"

Tokoyami looked away for a moment. "You saw what happened at the training camp. My body was not strong enough to contain Dark Shadow. People were hurt because of me. And so, I must not only train my quirk, but my body and mind as well."

"Ah, so that's why you have been attending Yaoyorozu's tutoring, isn't it?" Shoji received a nod from Tokoyami in response.

"Pfft, that's just an excuse for being a nerd." A third voice echoed out of nowhere. Shoji didn't have to trace its source, as Dark Shadow phased out of Tokoyami's chest and in front of him right after it had said that.

"Begone. You will not be the one training today." Tokoyami turned to glare at his Shadow. Shoji found the relationship between the host and the symbiote quite peculiar. The creature never left Tokoyami's body during class or in formal situations, but it was always chiming into conversations when Tokoyami was out with friends or even when they were by himself.

What was their relationship? Where they like friends? Brothers. It was hard to tell by Tokoyami's constant brooding and sometimes (like right now) grumpy behavior – but presuming they had been together since the age of four, Dark Shadow's words were probably more of a friendly teasing than insults.

"Is there something on my face?" Shoji snapped back to reality as Tokoyami's voice traveled through the air, making him shake his head.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, no. Why do you ask?"

"I noticed one of your eyes was aimed specifically at me." Tokoyami crossed his arms.

"Well, when I go somewhere enclosed, I like to keep an eye on the whole space." He morphed said eye back into a hand and used it to scratch the back of his head. "I'm sorry if that made you uncomfortable."

"Hm… You didn't sound very confident just now."

"I was doing some observation on…" Shoji prolonged the pause and hoped Tokoyami wouldn't inquire further.

"Spit it out." Tokoyami did inquire further, much to Shoji's dismay.

The taller boy let out a small sigh, defeated. "Tokoyami. Aren't you left-handed?"

"Yes that is correct."

"And you say you haven't been doing any exercise recently, correct?"

"Yes, that is also correct. What is your actual question, Shoji?" Tokoyami raised an eyebrow.

"Is there any particular reason why your right arm seems stronger than your left one, then?" Shoji coughed and looked away briefly, presumably already knowing the not so appropriate answer.

Dark Shadow, who was away examining some dumbbells, suddenly chimed into the conversation. "He's onto you, Tokoyami."

"…You have been here for precisely five minutes and you have already pried more into my personal life than I am comfortable with." Tokoyami crossed his arms. It was possible to see a small pink blush under his feathers if one looked hard enough. "Shall we begin, or do you perhaps want to spend the next hour and a half sleuthing for the rest of my private details, Shoji?"

"I'm done." Shoji simply stated. He was lucky Tokoyami couldn't see him smirking behind his mask. "Let's start. Have you stretched already?"

Tokoyami nodded. "I have already stretched and warmed up, thanks to the video."

"Good, good. Then we can start the actual training now."

Shoji turned away and started looking for proper training equipment. Fortunately, U.A.'s gym had pretty much everything he needed. It was tempting to just take everything from the storage and just (figuratively) throw it at Tokoyami, but they needed to go one step at a time. After some careful thinking, Shoji decided it would be the best if Tokoyami started with the basic of the basic: dumbbells. He was carrying three sets of two dumbbells, sized small, medium and large. He carefully put one of them in the ground and morphed the now free hand into a mouth. "Choose one. I'd recommend starting with the lighter ones, of course. It's not good to overestimate your body."

"Yes, I am aware of my limits." Tokoyami cleared his throat. "Also, why did you do that?"

"Hm?" Shoji raised an eyebrow. "Why did I do what?"

"You could have spoken using your actual mouth. Why did you choose to use a duplicate?"

"…It's complicated." Shoji instinctively tucked his ever-present mask, pulling it up ever so slightly. "I don't feel comfortable talking about it right now."

Tokoyami didn't answer to that, but his facial expression indicated he wasn't satisfied with the answer – although he was polite enough to not actually question it further. Shoji noticed this and had an idea. "Actually, I'm going to tell you."

"Oh?" Tokoyami perked up.

"But only when you are capable of lifting that," Shoji pointed at a barbell at the corner of the room – possibly the heaviest one there was, "without the help of your quirk. Think of it as a little incentive."

Tokoyami was about to argue against that but Shoji had already morphed the mouth back into a hand and picked up the dumbbell from the ground, extending his arms towards him. Tokoyami huffed and picked up the lightest set – one in each hand – and was surprised to see that they did weigh more than they appeared to.

"Now, there are a series of exercises you can do with those. For the sake of simplicity, let's start with something familiar."

Shoji picked up the heaviest dumbbells with his upper set of arms. He then started doing punching motions in a slow pace. "Repeat after me."

Tokoyami quickly found out that Shoji was way stronger than he was. Everything he did just came out more fluid, stable, consistent. No matter what the exercise was – squats, bench pressing, weightlifting – the taller boy just seemed to do everything with so much proficiency. He had stopped demonstrating the exercises to Tokoyami and was currently doing his own activity – lifting weights much heavier than Tokoyami would probably ever be. It was amazing to watch such physical prowess in action – and that was exactly what Tokoyami did instead of paying full attention to his own exercises.

Tokoyami was staring at Shoji doing squats, when he suddenly noticed one of his dumbbells wasn't on his hands anymore. He didn't have to look for it at all, because he also felt a sharp pain in his right foot. He didn't have to look down to figure out what had just happened.

"Ow." He said nonchalantly, even though he really wanted to scream. "I think today's session is officially."

Shoji quickly turned around to see what had happened. Tokoyami had already picked up the dumbbell, and was trying to walk towards the rack they were originally on. **Trying** , because the movement he was currently doing was so slow it couldn't even be considered limping.

"Here, let me help." Shoji quickly took it out of Tokoyami's hands and put it back on its place for him. "Do you need help getting to the infirmary?"

"I'm fine. Thank you for helping me with my training." Tokoyami did a small polite bow and tried to move away so Shoji wouldn't see him tearing up, but he suddenly felt himself being scooped up and carried by three pairs of arms. He wanted to protest, but this was probably the closer he was ever get to those muscles for a while, so he managed to keep his mouth shut.

"Well… You can continue training with your arms. Just grip harder next time." Shoji finally said after a while, breaking the somewhat comfortable silence between them. "I can continue helping you, if you'd like."

"Absolutely. In fact, you are partly responsible by this. You should have paid closer attention to me." Tokoyami said in a sarcastic tone.

"Oh? If you say so. It's only fair if we start today, right? So after Recovery Girl is done taking care of you, I'm going to take you to the shower room and won't take my eyes off you the whole time."

"Wait, that's not what I mean–"

"Too late, we're almost there." Shoji hummed. "We are going to train every week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. And I'll only be accepting schedule change requests after our training tomorrow."

"Very funny, Shoji." Tokoyami let out a small chuckle, but Shoji didn't seem to let up.

He kind of liked it that way.


End file.
